Overview and CQC Inspections

OverallRequires improvement

Our inspector's description of this service

Last updated 6 September 2016

BMI The Ridgeway Hospital is part of BMI Healthcare Limited. The hospital is located in Wroughton, close to Swindon. It serves the local population, and treats privately funded and NHS patients. Surgery and medical services are provided for inpatients, day-case patients and outpatients, and the hospital treats both adults and children. Children from three to 15 years can be treated as outpatients, and children aged 16 or 17 years can be treated as inpatients, day-case patients and outpatients.

The main hospital was built in 1984. It was extended in 2000 to add other services including physiotherapy and hydrotherapy, a dedicated day-case unit, which includes endoscopy, and the four-bed oncology unit (the Webster Suite). In 2011/12, the hospital had further development providing a third operating theatre, four extra consulting rooms, and an extended main reception.

The hospital has 49 beds. These include 33 inpatient en suite rooms, 12 single en suite rooms in the day-case unit, and a four-bed oncology suite. There are three operating theatres all with their own anaesthetic rooms. Outpatients and diagnostic services have 12 consulting rooms, including a dedicated ophthalmic room and ENT room, plus a treatment room for minor procedures. Other services at the hospital include health screening, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and sports and exercise medicine. For these services, there is a fully equipped physiotherapy gymnasium, hydrotherapy pool, six treatment rooms and two consulting rooms.

The registered manager and accountable officer for controlled drugs for BMI The Ridgeway Hospital is the hospital’s executive director, James Lowe, who has been in the post since April 2012.

During this inspection we looked at surgery, medicine, outpatient and diagnostic imaging, and children’s and young people’s services. We inspected the hospital as part of our routine comprehensive inspection programme for independent healthcare services. We carried out a comprehensive announced inspection on 19 and 20 April 2016 and an unannounced inspection on 29 April 2016.

Inspection ratings

We rate most services according to how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led they are, using four levels:

Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Inadequate – the service is performing badly and we've taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.

No rating/under appeal/rating suspended – there are some services which we can’t rate, while some might be under appeal from the provider. Suspended ratings are being reviewed by us and will be published soon.

Ticks and crosses

We don't rate every type of service. For services we haven't rated we use ticks and crosses to show whether we've asked them to take further action or taken enforcement action against them.

There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.